SHARE

Club liquor-license hearing today

By {screen_name}
Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Kevin Eardley is one step away from making his Fantasy become reality.

The Grand Junction Liquor Licensing Authority is expected to decide this afternoon whether to grant a liquor license to the local businessman so he can open a strip club — called Fantasy — in an industrial area of northwest Grand Junction.

The public hearing begins at 2 p.m. in the City Hall auditorium.

The club would be at 2258 Colex Drive, which is near U.S. Highway 6&50 and G Road.

The liquor-license application indicates the nearly 7,900-foot club would have seating for 138 people and be open from 5 p.m. to 2 a.m. It could open as early as November.

Liquor-license applicants are encouraged, but not required, to survey surrounding employees, residents and property owners to gauge whether the neighborhood is supportive of such establishments. Applicants can pick and choose whom they contact and aren’t required to survey every property owner in the area.

In the case of the proposed club, only one of 425 people who responded to the survey indicated they thought other “outlets” in the area were meeting the neighborhood’s “reasonable requirements.” The responses of two others were disqualified because they lived or worked outside the area.

The survey also asked whether people would like to see the club granted a liquor license.

Only one out of 61 who responded said no. Eardley contacted or attempted to contact people at an additional 72 addresses, but people at those places mostly were not home or refused to answer the survey’s two questions.

The survey area encompassed 21 1/2 Road to the west, 23 1/2 Road to the east, H Road on the north and Saddlehorn Road on the south.

More broadly, the club has support and opposition.

The Grand Junction Planning Commission twice rejected a conditional-use permit that would allow the club to serve alcohol, only to have the City Council remand the issue back to them.

The third time, the Planning Commission approved the permit in a split vote.

New Day Ministries minister Mike MacFarlane then appealed the Planning Commission’s decision, but the City Council upheld it.